


If You Can Make It There...

by Severina



Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: Community: 25fluffyfics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-20
Updated: 2009-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-10 12:27:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/99727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Severina/pseuds/Severina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Justin is absolutely certain that he has made the biggest mistake of his life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If You Can Make It There...

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ayesakara](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=ayesakara).



> Post Season Five  
> Written for LJ's 25FluffyFics community, and for ayesakara for Christmas 2009  
> Prompt 25: Writers Choice

Justin is absolutely certain that he has made the biggest mistake of his life.

His new apartment makes his former bachelor pad in Pittsburgh look like the Taj Mahal. He's sure that the shared bathroom down the hall hasn't been cleaned since the Nixon administration, and he didn't pack flip-flops to wear in the shower. He fears foot fungus almost more than he fears STDs, so this doesn't bode well.

The room that's been allocated to him in the apartment is only big enough for a dilapidated single bed and a forlorn four-drawer bureau. His walk-in closet at his mom's house was bigger.

The radiator is broken, so it feels like a balmy Club-Tropicana-level one hundred and twenty degrees in the apartment at all times. His roommate explains that the landlord is "useless" (which Justin chooses to interpret as "a slum lord who only cares about the fucking ridiculous eight hundred and fifty dollars a month EACH we are paying to live in this fleapit") and tells him that they simply have to leave the window open in an attempt to cool the place down. The traffic noise is deafening, and the stifling heat abates not one iota. He can feel himself breaking out, and he was pretty sure he left acne behind at eighteen.

He _feels_ eighteen.

The roommate never breaks a sweat.

Oh yes. The roommate.

Julian is tall and striking and prettier than he is. Justin wonders where Daphne could possibly have met him, why she never mentioned him before, what kind of fuck he would be, and whether he could find another roommate quickly if he strangled Julian in his sleep. He thinks that last one particularly often, especially when Julian is prancing around in his club wear and bragging about his latest conquest at Heaven while Justin stares dully at his own sweat pooling beneath his chair.

Justin picks up the phone to call home at least once a day during that first week. He wants to explain that coming to New York was a foolish idea. He hates everything about the stupid City That Never Sleeps (how can _anyone_ sleep with all that traffic noise?) He feels zero inspiration to create. He misses his family and his friends and mostly he misses Brian.

On the seventh day, he makes a call.

"So," Brian says upon answering, "are you a big fat fucking success yet?"

Justin bites back everything he wants to say; knows suddenly that it's all a lie. He's not eighteen; he's not alone; he can make it if he just gets the fuck over himself and goes out there and _does_ it.

"Not yet," he says. "Give me another week."


End file.
